I Don't Know How the Story Ends (3 page)

He received a hard shove in return, which sent him staggering against the bar. Then he launched himself on his rival's neck, and next thing, the two of them were rolling on the floor. There was a woman standing by—not a very nice one, by the way she was dressed—and she recoiled in horror when one of the men rolled on top of the other and raised a very large knife—

“
Stop
!
” I screamed. I'm not the kind who screams for show, but what came out of me was showy and loud enough to stop the fight. The cowboys glanced around, startled. A voice came from the other side of the fence, alarming and close: “What the—”

Ranger shot a poisonous look my way before grabbing my arm and pulling me away so fast I nearly fell over. I was speechless until we were back on the street: “Unhand me, you—villain!”

“Didn't you know what that was? Didn't you hear the camera?” he hissed. “It wasn't a real fight—they were just making a picture.”

“Of course I knew that!” And indeed, I was beginning to recall hearing somewhere how Southern California was fast becoming the nation's motion-picture capital. But that was a bit of information like Akron, Ohio, being the rubber-tire capital—it had nothing to do with me. That is, until I'd made a fool of myself.

“I knew it was some kind of performance. It looked like a play. But then it happened so fast—and we saw a gunfight earlier today—and—”

“Huh,” he remarked, shaking his head sadly at my denseness. “Come on.”

Sylvie was sticking to him like a wet lollipop, so I had no choice. We picked our way out of the lot and were soon back on the street, where she plied him with questions. “Why were they fighting, Ranger? What was making that clickety noise? Did that man get stuck with the knife?”

“It was a picture,” he said again. “The clicking noise was the camera. The action goes on a film that runs through a projector, and you see it on a screen. Haven't you ever been to a picture show—or a nickelodeon even? Keystone Cops? Mary Pickford or Charlie Chaplin—you've never seen
Charlie
? He's the most famous man in the world!”

“Not to us,” I said with a sniff. “Mother thinks he's silly. And vulgar, the way he chases women.”

“Nuts!” Ranger scoffed rudely. “She should talk to her sister. Buzzy's seen lots of Chaplin pictures, and she laughs as loud as anybody.”

“Why does he chase women? He could chase me all day and never catch me!” As if to prove her point, Sylvie raced ahead of us.

“Mary Pickford is perfectly all right,” I told Ranger, defending Mother's taste. “We've seen
Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm
.”

“But didn't you know that Mary Pickford works here in this town? Lives here too—I can show you her house.”

“So what?” His scorn was becoming tiresome. “Famous people live in Seattle too, like…” But I couldn't think of any at the moment.

“
Ranger
!
” Sylvie yelled, as she pelted back toward us. “It's wondrous, it's magniferent! What is it?”

I looked where she was pointing and gasped in spite of myself.

Towering above the ordinary little houses surrounding them were the massive walls of an ancient temple. Its arches reared against the sky, with golden fretwork spun between them, painted frescoes, elephants prancing on the tops of columns—far too much to take in one glance. I merely stood like a pillar of salt, dumbly echoing Sylvie: “What is it?”

Ranger's face glowed with satisfaction as though he'd built the whole splendid structure with his own hands. “
That
, my dear, is Babylon.”

Tales of Babylon

“Babylon has fallen,” I said, being too overwhelmed for the moment to think of anything smarter.

“Looks like it rose again,” Ranger told me smugly. He led us to a plank fence directly under the towering walls. “This is Belshazzar's Court. The gates of the city used to stand here, but they got pulled down to make room for this.”

“Who's Belshazzar?” Sylvie asked in a hushed voice. “Is he home? Will he let us go in?” She was overcome—perhaps by the elephants, which were awe-inspiring indeed, even though a close look showed the gold paint peeling off.

“But what
is
it?” I asked yet again.

Ranger leaned against the fence, gazing up dreamily. “You've heard of
Intolerance
, right?”

“Of course,” I said, wondering how ignorant he supposed me to be.

“What's intolerance?” Sylvie asked eagerly.

“You know,” I told her. “There are lots of things Mother won't tolerate, like running in the house and sneezing at the table and—”

Ranger thumped his back against the fence, gazing upward with a sigh as though beseeching the gods for patience. “You girls are pitiful. I mean the picture
Intolerance
. The greatest epic ever produced. D. W. Griffith made it—that's his studio, right across the street.”

I glanced in the direction he pointed, at a sprawling barn of a building I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, even with
Fine Arts
grandly proclaimed on the sign across the entrance. “Oh, the picture. We didn't see it. My parents heard it was unsuitable for children.”

In fact, Rosetta had told me about seeing
Intolerance
with Ralph the iceman, but the meaning of the greatest epic ever produced was apparently lost on her. “I couldn't make heads or tails of it,” she complained. “All that shuttling back and forth between old times and new times—my head was spinning. And it was pret' near four hours! The Good Lord never meant for folks to set that long. My tailbone like to petrified.”

When I asked if it was unsuitable for children, she'd snorted. “I'll say this: those dancing girls in Babylon didn't wear enough clothes to dry a saucer with. Ralph sure sat up and took notice at that part.”

“
Intolerance
is a masterpiece,” Ranger told us fervently.

“What's it about?” Sylvie asked, willing to take his word on just about anything by now.

“It's about man's inhumanity to man.”

“Which man?” she persisted.

He sank on his heels and motioned us to sit beside him. The Griffith studio seemed quiet today; no clamor and bustle behind the barn door, unlike that other junkyard—I mean, motion picture factory—we'd visited. “It's really four stories, and each one happens in a different time and place.”

With that, he launched out on choppy narrative seas, telling all four stories, which soon tangled hopelessly in my head. Sylvie's too, even though she listened with raptness. Ranger's hands were large for the rest of him, with long, slithery fingers that jabbed and poked and embroidered his words. On the Babylon parts, Ranger became so excited that he twitched, bouncing on his heels: “Then there's a
huge
battle! And you should have seen King Belshazzar driving his chariot along the top of the walls! With arrows falling around him like rain! You can almost feel your head getting bigger, trying to take it all in!”

I had felt like that once, on the ferry bound for Vancouver Island, gazing back at the tumultuous mountains of the Olympic Peninsula. But that was nature, not flickers. “You must have seen it more than once to remember all that,” I observed.

“Seven times,” he said, and my mouth dropped open.

“How could your parents take you to see the same picture
seven
times
?”

“Who said anybody took me? In fact, I wasn't even supposed to see it once. In fact,” he added with a wary glance, “you don't have to repeat that.”

“Hah,” I said.

“It was only fair I get to see it. After all, I was in it.”

Sylvie jumped up in excitement. “You were
in
it? What did you do, Ranger? Did you get to drive the charet?”

“Chariot,” he corrected. “My father knows Mr. Griffith, see. Invested money in his pictures. So we came down here a couple of times when the Babylon scenes started shooting. D. W. was talking to Pa one day, and he noticed me. ‘Titus,' he says, ‘that boy of yours has a Babylonian look. Do you think he'd agree to appear in a scene?'”

“But what did you do exactly?” I was trying to picture him as a Babylonian, which his foreign-looking darkness may have suited.

“I got to hold the chariot horses for the Mountain Girl when she drives to the Persian camp to learn their secret plans. Remember, I told you that part?” I nodded uncertainly. “After that, a ten-foot pole couldn't have kept me away.” (Wild horses, I thought he meant, but let it go.) “I was down here every chance I got, just to watch. And once”—he started bouncing on his heels again—“when they were shooting the last battle, I sneaked into some armor and grabbed a helmet and joined right in! One of the Persians stabbed me, and I died a bloody death. That's one reason I had to see the picture so many times—to find myself getting killed.”

“And did you?”

“I think so, but it's hard to tell with the helmet and all.”

Sylvie blurted out, “Could we do it, Ranger? Is D. W. making another picture that we could be in?”
Speak for yourself
, I thought.

“He's always making pictures,” Ranger said. “Great ones. But there'll never be another like
Intolerance
.” Sylvie's face fell at the unlikelihood that she would ever get to die a bloody death on the walls of Babylon. “You should have seen all the people it took,” he went on dreamily. “Hundreds—
thousands
, even. And every one had to have a costume and weapons, and a place to stand and something to do—and the director has to keep it all in his
head
. D. W.'s the king of directors. He never gets flustered, even when the walls are shaking and the horses are nervous and half the soldiers can't find their helmets and spears. Why, one day—”

A sudden breeze sprang upon us like a Persian spy, making the palm leaves rattle overhead. “Can't you tell us on the way home? It's getting late; Mother will be worried.”

Heaving a sigh and casting a last longing look at Belshazzar's palace, he rose to his feet and stuck out a hand to Sylvie. I followed them through an alley and out to Sunset Boulevard, where he turned north.

“Aren't we going home?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he replied. “We're taking a little detour. I have to see a friend.”

“
Now?
Can't you take us home first and then go see your friend?”

A sharp
ding!
sounded behind us, and Ranger turned his head as a streetcar approached. Then he broke into a gallop, slipping his elbow out of the sling and waving both arms wildly overhead. The streetcar slowed, and he jumped aboard the rear end, pulling Sylvie behind him.

“Come on, Isobel!” she yelled.

I ran a few steps and hopped on, thankful for the ride. “Your collarbone doesn't seem very broken to me,” I remarked to Ranger.

“It's all healed up now, but nobody needs to know that just yet. I can get out of some chores that way.”

“Well, of all the—”

“Fares!” bawled the streetcar driver.

We worked our way slowly to the front of the car, Ranger fumbling in his pockets. “I think… No, just a minute…um… Looks like I only have enough for one. You have any change on you, Isobel?”

“If you'd told me we were going to be using public transportation, I would have brought my pocketbook—”

“How about you, Sylvia?”

“I'm Sylvie,” she corrected him. But she had no pocket change. She didn't even have pockets.

“Come on, kids,” the driver prompted us.

“Could she ride for half fare?” Ranger asked with a jerk of his thumb at my sister. “She's small.”

“Any time now,” the driver said as houses and palm trees sped by.

“Or how about a promissory note? I'll send you the money as soon as I get home. What's your name?”

“No dice, Jake.” The driver slowed down for a ragpicker's wagon directly ahead while tapping his horn impatiently. “Aren't you that Bell kid? Can't your old man ride you around in his fancy town car?”

“My father and I have some philosophical differences. That's why—”

“You got a philosophical difference with the LA County Transit Company, pal. Off, all three of ya.”

He stopped at the corner. Ranger took his time stepping down, turning to offer a hand to each of us so it didn't seem like we'd just been thrown off, though of course we had. “Thanks for the lift.”

Shaking his head, the driver buzzed on.

“What philosophical differences?” I asked Ranger.

He shrugged. “Big words stretch the ride out. Got up to four blocks this time. Only a few more to go.”

“And how do we get back?”

“I'll worry about that later. The Keystone Studio is straight ahead; that's where we're going. I want to show you something.”

At this rate we'll never get home!
I thought despairingly, but Ranger was already five paces ahead of me, hands in his pockets and elbows out, the disregarded sling hanging around his neck like a cowboy's bandana. Or an outlaw's. It was almost four o'clock and the sun slanted down from its westerly trek, still warm but not so intense. We passed cottages and storefronts, truck gardens and eucalyptus groves, and street vendors selling from carts, including one with a sign that read
I don't know where Mom is, but I've got POP ON
ICE
.

“Ha!” Ranger remarked to the proprietor, a boy no older than himself. “Good one.”

He turned a corner, with Sylvie close behind. Sighing, I could do nothing but follow, since he was the only one of us who knew his way around.

Next minute, he was charging right at me. Then he blazed on by, pulling Sylvie by the hand. He hesitated for a half second at the Pop on Ice stand, then pushed my little sister behind it and crouched down beside her. They were hardly out of sight when two boys pounded around the corner, one yelling, “We've got you now, Bell!”

Only they didn't. They slowed down, looking around confusedly, until the Pop on Ice boy pointed to the alley beside a florist shop and yelled, “
They went
thataway
!
”

With a wave of gratitude, the boys took off again. When their steps no longer sounded, Ranger crept out from behind the stand and painfully stretched his legs. “Thanks, Coy.”

“Anytime, Ranger.” The boy nodded as though this was not the first time he'd provided cover.

“We were hiding!” Sylvie skipped to me, ecstatic.

“From what?” I asked, as Ranger joined us with a quick look over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just chums from school.”

“And what did these
chums
want to beat you up for?”

“Not sure. Maybe the peach-pit incident. Or it could be the cayenne-pepper incident. Better hoof it.”

He stepped up his pace, and I had to do the same, while he led us on such a meandering route that I had to wonder if it was an evasive action. “How likely are we to run into any more ‘chums' from school?” I asked.

“Not very, if I keep a sharp lookout. Half of 'em are gone for the summer anyway.”

“Did you happen to have any friendly friends at school?”

He failed to answer as we turned yet another corner. I was completely lost by now. Only the lowering sun indicated which way was west. A dusty haze turned the sky yellow, and the pepper-tree smell thickened up like spicy cream-of-tomato soup, and everything seemed so strange I was suddenly, sharply homesick.

Motorcars passed in swirls of dust. A few were long and grand like Aunt Buzzy's, but many more were tin lizzies like my father's. Amid the hum of wheels and rattle of fenders I made out a clip-clop of hooves coming up behind us. Ranger turned around and raised his hat with an elaborate sweep of his arm. “Evening, Mr. DeMille.”

The gentleman on the chestnut horse touched his own broad-brimmed hat in reply. “Same to you, Mr. Bell. Ladies.”

Ranger paused to let me catch up. “That's one of the biggest directors in town.”

“Can't he afford a car?”

“Sure he can. When he first got here, his studio was a barn at the end of a mud track. He needed a horse just to get to it.”

And that's what Hollywood calls
big
? I thought. But I was too tired for a dispute.

“How much longer?” whined Sylvie.

“See up ahead?” He pointed at a collection of long, white buildings, some of them stucco and some no more than sticks and muslin.
Mack Sennett Comedies
read the biggest sign. “That's where we're going.”

While we waited to cross the street, Ranger swerved his head and gave me another of his piercing stares.

“Why do you keep
looking
at me like that?”

He faced front again. “Here we go.” At a break in the traffic, we scampered across the street and passed the main gate as a sleepy doorman waved Ranger through. “My friend works here in the afternoons. They'll be cranking up their evening shoot schedule pretty soon so we can't stay long, but let me show you the—”

Sylvie gave yet another cry of wonder. “Look, Isobel!”

I looked but could not tell what I was looking at. Like a gigantic top hat, it stood about twenty feet high, as big around as a house, with a wooden platform circling it like a brim. The cylinder was painted with low rolling hills, trees, and blue sky. A couple of workmen near the back of the platform were fixing a tree in place. They took no notice of us as we walked up to the edge.